5 ms·

Related, perhaps? The secret to living to 110? Bad record-keeping, says Ig Nobel Prize winner. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/12/25/lifestyle/lifespan

Related, perhaps? The secret to living to 110? Bad record-keeping, says Ig Nobel Prize winner. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/12/25/lifestyle/lifespan-japan-data/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/12/25/lifestyle/lifes...

em500 1y ago
The linked BBC article devotes the last quarter of text to this. Don't assume they're taking all statistics at face value.
- 93po 1y ago
  the problem is presenting a headline as fact, rather than as a reported number or adding any qualifying words like "possibly"
dadrian 1y ago
Yeah, I assume this means there’s a lot of fraud
- ekianjo 1y ago
  When there's money to be made from dead relatives, and an incentive for governments to make it look like people live beyond 100 so that they can claim superiority, yeah, that's a good recipe for massive fraud.
- walthamstow 1y ago
  Probably but stats aside there certainly are a lot of very old people in Japan living near-normal lives compared to other developed countries. After an hour in any town and I'd seen more 95+yos walking about than 10 years in Britain. And the number of times I saw 4 generations of men from one family in the bathhouse!
delichon 1y ago
Then I may be immortal.
- ainiriand 1y ago
  You are just a rounding error.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  I went from teenager, to twenty something, to something something. Hoping I live to something something something.
MichaelRo 1y ago
After reading a couple of articles on fraud or just sloppy record keeping almost always behind centenarians, now I'm extremely skeptical on claims of people having past 100 years of age. While there are a few people who seemed to be nearly immortal, as in "being around since forever", like the Queen Of England or recently deceased https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Iliescu https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Iliescu ... they didn't actually push past 100. With all the care and life standard, seems to be a hard limit in our genes, so until something is done about that, better get realistic expectations.
- reactordev 1y ago
  My grandfather made it to 98, but holy cow he was frail. The last few years of his life he couldn’t move much. Shuffle walked only a few inches. Drooled on every meal in front of him. I loved my grandfather but watching him in that state, we were all relieved for him when he passed. He smoked only during WW2, was an army corp of engineers colonel when he retired from the military, came from a dirt farm in Michigan, engineered all kinds of civil and military projects. In the end, he still managed to engineer a smile. He absolutely loved maps/atlases/GIS.
  - mahkeiro 1y ago
    My wife grandmother made it to 102 and when she died (from an infection)it was a surprise as she was still very active and was walking everyday. Genetics and luck play also a big role.
    - majkinetor 1y ago
      You don't know that. It's just hypothesis. I knew a woman that had 101 years when she died. She was vital until 99 or so, not even wearing glasses. She had a very hard life, including the fact that both her husband, only son died. So, I guess, luck is out of question for this case. Its anybodies guess why she was living that long. Genetics for sure do not exist in vacuum and environment may activate or do nothing to your genes. You can also brute force specific genetic dissorders by taking copious amounts of vitamins.
siva7 1y ago
This is about those aged over 100, not 110 which is a completely different ballpark... Besides that, all my relatives lived close to 100 and they certainly hadn't a healthy lifestyle nor are they japanese nor had they access to the current medical breakthroughs. I assume the secret is mostly genetics and it is easy for me to see how 100k are aged over 100 in Japan.
- paulcole 1y ago
  > I assume the secret is mostly genetics In Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal he mentions that research shows that long life is not particularly heritable.
  - sigmoid10 1y ago
    Lifespan genetics research is all over the place, partly because it is hard to get adequate statistics. There's currently a new preprint paper by Shenhar et al. that suggests life expectancy is actually heavily influenced by genetics if you account for the confounding factors correctly.
  - manquer 1y ago
    Many diseases that shorten lives have increased chances due to genetics from Alzheimer’s to diabetes or some heart diseases(the leading cause of death) . While longer lives may not be directly inheritable, shorter lives absolutely can be, good genetics does play a role to living long .
- 47282847 1y ago
  > I assume the secret is mostly genetics Obligatory mention of how genetics and early nurture and environment cannot be separated in research: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/looking-in-the-cultural-mirror/201006/why-twin-studies-dont-separate-genes-and-environment https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/looking-in-the-cultu...
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > I assume the secret is mostly genetics That, but also various factors during one's life - most importantly, ample and healthy food (especially during fetal growth, childhood and youth), a lack of exposure to known damaging factors for physical and mental health (smog, noise, tobacco, alcohol and other drugs), and a lack of wars and other forms of violence. The top killers in the Western world are cardiovascular diseases (strongly linked to food) and cancers (strongly linked, again, to food but also to drugs). A safe working culture (both in business and in private) is also a good thing to have - the typical lackluster attitude towards workplace safety is a top cause of workplace accidents both fatal and non-fatal but serious.
3eb7988a1663 1y ago
A link to the paper on biorxiv[0], Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud. A bit of the abstract: In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. In Italy, England, and France, which have more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by poverty, low per capita incomes, shorter life expectancy, higher crime rates, worse health, higher deprivation, fewer 90+ year olds, and residence in remote, overseas, and colonial territories. In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age. Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA, and supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records. I also found an interview with the author [1], which had some choice quotes, one that popped out to me, For example, Costa Rica, 42% of the centenarians in Costa Rica turned out to be lying about their age after the study was conducted. And once you corrected those errors, they went from world leading to, quote, near the bottom of the pack, in terms of late life expectancy. And so the question I have for those researchers is how do you explain that, for example, 82% of Japanese centenarians were missing or dead in your sample? And this wasn't discovered by demographers. This was discovered by the government of Japan. [0] http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/704080 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/704080 [1] https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/09/25/the-secret-to-a-long-life-fraud-and-shoddy-record-keeping-says-one-researcher https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/09/25/the-secret-to-a-l...
PicassoCTs 1y ago
[dead]
nerder92 1y ago
This should come from this paper I guess: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3

em500 1y ago

The linked BBC article devotes the last quarter of text to this. Don't assume they're taking all statistics at face value.

93po 1y ago
the problem is presenting a headline as fact, rather than as a reported number or adding any qualifying words like "possibly"

dadrian 1y ago

Yeah, I assume this means there’s a lot of fraud

ekianjo 1y ago
When there's money to be made from dead relatives, and an incentive for governments to make it look like people live beyond 100 so that they can claim superiority, yeah, that's a good recipe for massive fraud.
walthamstow 1y ago
Probably but stats aside there certainly are a lot of very old people in Japan living near-normal lives compared to other developed countries. After an hour in any town and I'd seen more 95+yos walking about than 10 years in Britain. And the number of times I saw 4 generations of men from one family in the bathhouse!

delichon 1y ago

Then I may be immortal.

ainiriand 1y ago
You are just a rounding error.
DonHopkins 1y ago
I went from teenager, to twenty something, to something something. Hoping I live to something something something.

MichaelRo 1y ago

After reading a couple of articles on fraud or just sloppy record keeping almost always behind centenarians, now I'm extremely skeptical on claims of people having past 100 years of age. While there are a few people who seemed to be nearly immortal, as in "being around since forever", like the Queen Of England or recently deceased https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Iliescu https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Iliescu ... they didn't actually push past 100. With all the care and life standard, seems to be a hard limit in our genes, so until something is done about that, better get realistic expectations.

reactordev 1y ago
My grandfather made it to 98, but holy cow he was frail. The last few years of his life he couldn’t move much. Shuffle walked only a few inches. Drooled on every meal in front of him. I loved my grandfather but watching him in that state, we were all relieved for him when he passed. He smoked only during WW2, was an army corp of engineers colonel when he retired from the military, came from a dirt farm in Michigan, engineered all kinds of civil and military projects. In the end, he still managed to engineer a smile. He absolutely loved maps/atlases/GIS.
- mahkeiro 1y ago
  My wife grandmother made it to 102 and when she died (from an infection)it was a surprise as she was still very active and was walking everyday. Genetics and luck play also a big role.
  - majkinetor 1y ago
    You don't know that. It's just hypothesis. I knew a woman that had 101 years when she died. She was vital until 99 or so, not even wearing glasses. She had a very hard life, including the fact that both her husband, only son died. So, I guess, luck is out of question for this case. Its anybodies guess why she was living that long. Genetics for sure do not exist in vacuum and environment may activate or do nothing to your genes. You can also brute force specific genetic dissorders by taking copious amounts of vitamins.

siva7 1y ago

This is about those aged over 100, not 110 which is a completely different ballpark... Besides that, all my relatives lived close to 100 and they certainly hadn't a healthy lifestyle nor are they japanese nor had they access to the current medical breakthroughs. I assume the secret is mostly genetics and it is easy for me to see how 100k are aged over 100 in Japan.

paulcole 1y ago
> I assume the secret is mostly genetics In Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal he mentions that research shows that long life is not particularly heritable.
- sigmoid10 1y ago
  Lifespan genetics research is all over the place, partly because it is hard to get adequate statistics. There's currently a new preprint paper by Shenhar et al. that suggests life expectancy is actually heavily influenced by genetics if you account for the confounding factors correctly.
- manquer 1y ago
  Many diseases that shorten lives have increased chances due to genetics from Alzheimer’s to diabetes or some heart diseases(the leading cause of death) . While longer lives may not be directly inheritable, shorter lives absolutely can be, good genetics does play a role to living long .
47282847 1y ago
> I assume the secret is mostly genetics Obligatory mention of how genetics and early nurture and environment cannot be separated in research: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/looking-in-the-cultural-mirror/201006/why-twin-studies-dont-separate-genes-and-environment https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/looking-in-the-cultu...
mschuster91 1y ago
> I assume the secret is mostly genetics That, but also various factors during one's life - most importantly, ample and healthy food (especially during fetal growth, childhood and youth), a lack of exposure to known damaging factors for physical and mental health (smog, noise, tobacco, alcohol and other drugs), and a lack of wars and other forms of violence. The top killers in the Western world are cardiovascular diseases (strongly linked to food) and cancers (strongly linked, again, to food but also to drugs). A safe working culture (both in business and in private) is also a good thing to have - the typical lackluster attitude towards workplace safety is a top cause of workplace accidents both fatal and non-fatal but serious.

3eb7988a1663 1y ago

A link to the paper on biorxiv[0], Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud. A bit of the abstract: In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. In Italy, England, and France, which have more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by poverty, low per capita incomes, shorter life expectancy, higher crime rates, worse health, higher deprivation, fewer 90+ year olds, and residence in remote, overseas, and colonial territories. In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age. Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA, and supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records. I also found an interview with the author [1], which had some choice quotes, one that popped out to me, For example, Costa Rica, 42% of the centenarians in Costa Rica turned out to be lying about their age after the study was conducted. And once you corrected those errors, they went from world leading to, quote, near the bottom of the pack, in terms of late life expectancy. And so the question I have for those researchers is how do you explain that, for example, 82% of Japanese centenarians were missing or dead in your sample? And this wasn't discovered by demographers. This was discovered by the government of Japan. [0] http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/704080 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/704080 [1] https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/09/25/the-secret-to-a-long-life-fraud-and-shoddy-record-keeping-says-one-researcher https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/09/25/the-secret-to-a-l...

PicassoCTs 1y ago

[dead]

nerder92 1y ago

This should come from this paper I guess: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3